Gustav evacuation: "Where was the contraflow?"

We evacuated on I-10 E to 90E to 65N to US Highway 84, to Daleville, AL. It took us 14 hours (MapQuest says this drive is a 5.5 hour drive). We left on Sunday morning at 6 a.m. We spent more than 5 hours just trying to get out of LA. Traffic on 10 was crawling. I saw no contraflow, though the news said it started at 4 a.m. Lanes on the other side were open and only the occasional car was coming into NOLA. On 90 as well, on Chef, no contraflow. The other lane was open, again, very little traffic coming in. We stopped on 90 for over 2 hours with no movement at all. We almost ran out of gas before we hit the 4th gas station in MS on 90 where they still had some gas left. I don't think it should have taken us 14 hours to get to our destination, and my big question is why wasn't contraflow happening? Our biggest worry was sitting in the heat for hours with our cat in her carrier. She was hyperventilating from the heat, and of course we also had no bathrooms to use for the first 5 hours of our trip. If the traffic hadn't been so bad, all would have gone well.

We came back to NOLA on Thursday the 4th. Again, traffic was awful, and it took us 9 hours to get back. However, I don't think there's anything that could have been done about that. It was the inability to get out of LA in a timely manner that was upsetting to us.